U.S. Gobbles Guacamole As Mexico Suffers Avocado Shortage

Okay, maybe it’s not as severe as the headline says, but hear me out.

News Taco has published at least six guacamole recipes in the past few months, and all the while there’s been a shortage of avocados in Mexico. I had no idea; was oblivious to the fact. So I was shocked to find the extent to which the aguacate shortage had affected families across Mexico and how News Taco had, possibly and unknowingly, contributed to familial strife.

Here’s how it happened: I was invited to a small dinner party hosted by a colleague over the weekend and among the guests were News Taco contributor Henry Flores and Javier Garza Ramos, Editor of El Siglo de Torreon.  Javier was anxious to know about News Taco and Henry and I were anxious to tell him. In that telling, among the descriptions and the details, Henry mentioned that he had read a great guacamole recipe on our site and was looking forward to trying it out. “We publish recipes on News Taco,” I said.

That’s when Javier told us about the shortage. “You’re lucky,” he said. Apparently aguacates are hard to find in Mexico these days, and the scarcity is driving up the price: a kilo of avocados – 60 to 65 pesos – costs more than the daily minimum wage – 56.7 pesos. And it’s not like farmers aren’t growing avocados. The shortage in Mexico is being caused by consumption in the U.S. and Europe.  Distributors in those parts of the world are paying a higher premium for the fruit, so the growers are selling to the higher bidder.

How bad has it gotten? The bins at the stores are empty because the majority of the production is being exported. The growers are happy, but the Mexican consumers are not. It’s almost an existential crisis. What is Mexican cuisine without agucates?

Javier said his wife had visited her mother and returned with a smuggled aguacate in her purse that she had taken from her mother’s pantry, without her mother knowing (I’ll give you a second to ponder the implications).

We’ve gone on a shameless guacamole binge here in the U.S., hording the world’s production of avocados, putting it in burritos and hot dog’s (hot dog’s!), driving up the prices and instigating, in the process, the pilfering among family members in Mexico. And News Taco has had a hand in that process, publishing the many varieties of guacamole that our contributors conjure.

I came very close, dangerously close, to promising Javier that I’d do my part to end this shameless situation by not purchasing or eating any more avocados.  But just then the conversation turned to the our favorite ways of preparing guacamole. I’m a traditionalist, reared with a simple guacamole, the way it was intended: avocados, lime juice and salt – that’s it. No tomatoes, no onion or cilantro or salsas or whatever else people contaminate their guacamole with.  Then it occurred to me that my plain guacamole, traditional as it may be, uses substantially more avocados per serving because it doesn’t have the other ingredients that take up room in the bowl. My guilt swelled.

But I got over it, in a painfully honest way. I love my guacamole the way I make it and if I were subjected to a shortage, the way all of Mexico has been for several weeks, I would go to great lengths to make sure I had some on my table for dinner – I’d even steal some from my own family.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda